


A Game of Cards at World's End

by misura



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:53:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3223085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>To call a man a 'dirty cheater' on Casti is to insult him twice over.</i> (Datak, pre-Exodus)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Game of Cards at World's End

To call a man a 'dirty cheater' on Casti is to insult him twice over.

First, it is well known only those of the lowest _liro_ cannot afford to bathe as often as would please the eyes and noses of those around and above them - say, twice a day. At a minimum.

And still, even the lowest laborer may afford a rag, some piece of cloth to ensure his inferior honor is not visible upon his face, for all the world to see and be sickened by. Honest work may make a man sweaty, but it does not excuse uncleanliness. Shame must be hidden, not put on display.

(There is, it may be said, a certain honor in bearing one's _liro_ with dignity. With acceptance, unspoilt by the too often seen ambition to better oneself. A man whose face cannot look pleasing ought not to show it at all, keeping it lowered to the ground instead, or covered.)

 

Second is, of course, the insult in accusing someone of cheating so ineptly that he'd be caught at it, in making the preposterous claim - not that your opponent's been cheating, but that he did so with insufficient skill not to be seen doing so.

All men cheat, on Casti. It's part of the game, part of life, even, some might say.

So.

 

"Is not my money as good as anyone else's?" Datak says. Knowing it is not.

There is little honor in beating one of a vastly inferior _liro_ at the tables. Less, in beating one of a superior one. It's bad manners, a clear refusal of that which the gods have decreed.

"Would the great Rashvi Karo have us believe he is afraid of, as he phrased it himself, 'a piece of gutter trash'?" Datak asks the room, not the man - a deliberate insult, and one he counts on paying off.

Karo has many faults, and this is the smallest of one: that he feels insecure.

His superior _liro_ has come to him by marriage - by money, in other words. A brother, who proved wise in the ways of supply and demand, and humble enough to catch the eye of one far above him, with an unmarried daughter - and, it is never said aloud, a streak of bad luck in his recent investments which has left him with a great many debts.

"I'm not afraid of you, worm," Karo says, and his sneer is an insult to his _liro_.

Under any other circumstance, Datak would feel obliged to cleanse the world of his presence. It would smell the better for it, and bring greater joy to the eye.

"Words," Datak says. He has dressed to impress - his best garments, unworn for nearly a year now.

He is pleased the blood stains barely show any more, after the twentieth washing. The chance that someone might recognize the design sends a pleasant buzz through his entire body.

"I have brought five thousand," Datak says, drawing his purse from a pocket where he keeps a poisoned _garra_ trap, normally, and holding it up for all to see its thickness. "Who wishes to take this sum from me, in an honest game?"

The response is loud, ugly and yet pleasing to his ears.

(The true answer, naturally, is 'no one'. One does not come to Karo's for an honest game.)

 

They play _ka-RO-shan_ first, naturally.

Karo imagines himself a master at it, for no better reason than that its name resembles his own. His preference is well known, though, and so those who seek his favor, or who simply does not wish him too cross with them to welcome them another time takes special pains to lose at it.

It is not always an easy thing, to permit a fool to sweep the round when he squanders his best cards and holds on to his weakest. It takes great skill, and greater patience.

Datak wagers wildly, irresponsibly. One such as he is not expected to know the value of money, of patience. Of wisdom.

By the time they move on to another table, he has lost two thousand.

Some would say he has also lost his arrogance, his uncalled for, unseemly confidence.

They, however, would be wrong. Forgivably, understandably, even pleasingly wrong, but still wrong.

 

Karo's brother's wife has a cousin.

Karo's brother's wife's cousin is all but promised as a groom to a lady of a slightly inferior _liro_ , a significant coup, for which her family and the lady herself are much envied.

The wedding will take place on the ark. It will be a good occasion to celebrate, and to reaffirm the system of _liro_ , to demonstrate, for all to see, that while their home planet may be destroyed, they still carry the Castithan way of life with them, to their new home.

These are the things people know, or think they know.

Datak knows differently.

 

The third game, and Datak is down to a thousand.

A nice, round number, Karo declares. Inviting him to bow out, to save what he can.

Datak smiles, calls him a motherless _ja-noh-SHER_ in the privacy of his own mind.

Accepts the suggestion that, by way of stakes in the next game, each player will put in a thousand.

 

Datak wins that game, and the one after that, and the one after _that_.

They move on to a new game, a new table. Some new players.

Datak keeps winning, which is reckless, foolish, arrogant. Had he stopped at a winning of ten, maybe fifteen thousand, people might have forgiven, if not forgotten.

He might have walked home and only been assaulted two, three times, by men alone.

He might have lived long enough to watch the Arks depart, to support his family in the difficult last days of their planet.

That's not going to happen now.

 

"You made the bet," Datak says, calmly, as if he hasn't been living towards this single moment for two years now. As if there is any man watching this who isn't thinking about putting a knife in his back.

(Not here, naturally. Not right now.)

"You lost." He might, he thinks, offer the money by way of a peace offering, if he thought doing so would make a lick of difference. It won't, though.

Dead men have no use for money - a fact which Karo might be slowly beginning to grasp.

Truth be told, Datak has entertained some hopes the man might be a bit slower on the uptake.

"Passage." He'll take his father. "On one of the Arks." His father will take the scrolls. "For me and my direct family." So much power, in such a small chit.

Karo sobs, which is extremely distasteful and very ill-mannered.

"Good game," Datak says, rising. Allowing the tide of well-wishers and back-stabbers and those who envy him to carry him out, to the streets, where the _jah-KA-sa_ will be waiting for him, with fake smiles and sharp knives.

 

He dreams of her, that night.

Changes the bandages on his wounds with calloused hands, and imagines them soft, and hers.

_Stahma._


End file.
